Wisley May 2019

Not quite summer and despite a grey and overcast day, what a pleasure to finally visit RHS Wisley. It is quite a commitment to put Maya in a carseat, even for a just an hour, but we had arranged to meet Judy and Heather, so off we went, hoping for the best.

Apparently a lot has been happening at Wisley - supported by a £160 million budget - the entrance has been renovated, there will be 3 bespoke laboratories for diagnostics, molecular and environmental research. There will be a new library and archive, 2 new learning studios with a teaching garden alongside, a new Herberium and digitisation suite. This all bodes well for the future. If I were young enough to be considering a career, I would be taking a long hard look at what they have on offer.

It barely being spring, a lot of new growth was just starting to happen. Bursts of colour in amongst the grey show the way for summer.

Watsonia season! The smell is irresistable to bees. 

I love this garden sculpture. It's just on the edge of the stream.

Dayne, Maya and Judy. Time for a cup of coffee (and a bacon bap) before Heather gets here.

Bottlebrush (Callistemon) is apparently endemic to Australia, but so familiar in South Africa.

Purple is quite dominant in the garden at the moment. Gorgeous!

Alliums

Lovely sculptures throughout the garden, but this is a favourite.

Dinosaurs! We didn't see any.

The calm before the storm. Maya loved Heather but half an hour later she was howling! On the M25 - no place to stop. 

Dorset

Back in Dorset we took ourselves off for a walk in the Stanpit Marsh.  Wherever you go on this tiny island there are extraordinary places to see and explore, you've just got to get out there. I think this is true of anywhere in the world. Even in dry places like the Karoo in South Africa, if you just get out there you'll be amazed. Dinosaurs, fossils, endless skies, game and nature reserves (don't forget Anysberg). A dog, of course, is the best excuse of all. Paul and Tarryn have Humphrey who is the friendliest boy you'll meet. So back to Dorset ...

65 hectares of sandy scrub, salt and freshwater marsh, reed beds, gravel estuarine banks located just below the confluence of the Avon and Stour rivers, on the north side of Christchurch Habour. There are over 300 species of plants, some rare and endangered.

There's a strong volunteer group - The Friends of Stanpit Marsh, who raise funds to support projects and the visitors' centre, they also fund the presence of a summer warden and provide information on daily conditions. What a great resource!

Dogs only allowed on leashes but Humphrey didn't mind.

And the best bit of all - baby horses!

Grazing is let out by the council to a local farmer and the babies are all born here, some within the last week. They find their feet quickly and are soon breaking free from Mom.

Almost time for me to head back to Sussex - bye Tarryn and Humphrey!

Salisbury May 2019

With a new baby in the house (not me! I'm long beyond that), I'm not getting out and about as often as I could be. But this weekend I took myself off to visit friends Tarryn and Paul in Dorset.

Almost the first thing we did was go back across the county lines to Salisbury in Wiltshire, specifically to visit the beautiful medieval cathedral. 

Salisbury recently went through some tough times with the Novichok poisoning of the Skripals by Russian agents in March 2018. Father and daughter both survived, a policeman was also affected but then in July a woman died and her partner was seriously affected by picking up a found perfume bottle, thought to have been the method of administering the poison and then discarded. For a year this was a city in lockdown and living here must have been a nightmare. Police and Army everywhere, what was safe, what wasn't? It's been given the all clear and things appear to be getting back to normal, but tourism must of necessity have been affected, so a fiscal effect to add to everything. What a world we live in! Beautiful, but also very very dangerous.

So on a lovely sunny day in May we did our bit to normalise life for Salisbury citizens.

What a lovely place.

Built between 1220 and 1258, the Cathedral has had the highest spire in England since 1549 (123m).

 

A South African connection. We always find one.

 

I keep on trying to photograph stained glass windows with not a lot of success.

Man's best friend, but to put your feet on? No!

An unusual feature of the nave is a modern font, installed in 2008. Designed by the water sculptor William Pye, it is a cruciform shape and has a 10-foot-wide bowl filled to the brim with water.  It is designed so that the water overflows through each corner into bronze gratings embedded in the cathedral's stone floor.  It's quite lovely.

Time for tea ...

In the Charter House is one of the surviving copies of the Magna Carta - a charter of rights agreed to by King John at Runnymede, near Windsor in 1215. What? you may ask.  It established the principle that everyone is subject to the law, even the king, and guarantees the rights of individuals, the right to justice and the right to a fair trial. Cornerstones of liberty and democracy and still as important today.

 

A good spot for wedding pics.

 
And now for something even older! Old Sarum (no, not Lord of the Rings), the first settlement of Salisbury and nearby to Stonehenge and Avebury.  Evidence of prehistoric settlement, an iron age fort, Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans - this site has seen it all. A royal palace and the footprint of the original Cathedral which was then moved to it's current position. There is a definite sense of age and history.

The site is now run by English Heritage.

 A freezing wind had sprung up on the hilltop so we headed back over the border to sunshine, dinner and wine.